This post contains useful information about astrology. It can be used for both beginners and more advanced people who wants to look over the basics. This is Astrology 101. It’ll help you get started out with astrology, and will provide you with basic knowledge, tips, pictures, help, and useful links.
If you’re wondering about anything, feel free to ask me, and I’ll answer!
Tip! If you’re wondering about anything, ask an astroblog. I’ll link my favourites down below. Don’t ask them to read your whole birthchart or to explain everything (unless they say they can) but ask them specific questions. And remember to shower them in the love and gratitude they deserve.
Why should you look into astrology?
Astrology can help you through anything in life. It can answer all your questions. It can help guide you. Exactly at the time you were born, all the planets and stars where lined up. And they all sent universal energy to you. Astrology and your birthchart is the blueprints you were born with. Your chart is the pavement, and the ground you stand on. The machine you were built into. It is the potential and the possibilities you have. What you chose to do with it is up to you. Which flowers you plant in the ground is your choice. How you’ll upgrade your machine is up to you.
How to start:
If you’re interested in astrology. First, you need to find out your chart. And for that, you need your birth date, place, and time. If you don’t have the time, you won’t have the possibility to look as deep into it as you might want to, but it’s better than nothing!
Here are some places you can calculate your birth chart. The first one is the most accurate.
Now that you have your chart. Make sure you have your chart drawing, a list of which Signs and degrees your Planets are in, a list of which Houses your Planets and Signs are, and a list of your aspects.
Here is Marilyn Monroe’s chart which I made at astro.com:
Picture 1:
Picture 2:
In picture nr. 1 is her: Natal chart drawing, planets in the signs, degrees (exmample Sun 10 degrees Gemini. The degree is between the Planet and the Sign), the aspects, and the houses. But I reccommend looking for your houses in picture 2 instead with the tables. It’s easier to understand.
In order to recreate picture nr. 2 with all the tabels and details, click on:
Saturn minimizes everything it’s in contact with. Suppression and control. Authoritive, and leading.
Uranus is rebellion, originality, uniqueness, the genuis, bizarre.
Neptune is the subconsciousness, 6th sense, imagination, fantasy, and dreams.
Pluto is transformation. Being reborn, rising from the ashes. Magnetism. Being obsessive.
Aspects:
The aspects is how the planets interact with each other within you, and how they affect each other. Like a bunch of marbles or dominos. One starts moving, and then all the others starts too!
If you’ve done all this now, I recommend looking into your minor aspects too.
Find out if there’s anything unusual about your chart. Any stelliums or interceptions. Stelliums are when there are 3-4 or more Planets in a House or Sign. Interceptions are when a Sign is enclosed within a house. When it jumps over that Sign at the list of Signs in the Houses.
Now that you know the basics, you can go ahead and continue to explore the astro-world! Find out more about your chart, look at other peoples’ charts, try synastry, vedic, vertex, draconic, persona charts, etc. Now that you have a solid footing, the rest is a lot easier. Let the inner curiousity for knowledge lead you into new areas of deeper and more interesting astrology!
I wish I could add more, but I could only add 50! Check them out! These are some of the blogs I follow + some of my mutuals. They all post creative and helpful content, and they all are talented and astonishing people. They are all angels so give them a follow and some love!
Human
beings have probably probed the cupola of the heavens in search of
meaning since the birth of ego consciousness. This was a time when
celestial and terrestrial events succeeded one another for reasons known
only to the divine autogenerator of the cosmos, when everything deemed
unconscious and inert could speak its mind, when magic was the world
language, and when the fundamental cohesion of all life was an
acknowledged and unspoken fact. Back then everything on the earth below
was thought to mimic and imitate conditions simulated in the Great
Above; the stars, planets, comets and other celestial bodies were the
shining genies whose words and whispers, actions and reactions,
agreements and disputations might incite minor and sometimes large-scale
consequences for the lives of all corporeal inhabitants. Eclipses,
conjunctions, oppositions, depressions, exaltations and other celestial
events worked like knee-jerk reactions, exacting benefic or malefic
influence, facilitating particular conditions, or awakening
transpersonal formative forces which would work through tribal
personalities. This Platonic-flavoured cosmos in which everything was
Aeolian, alive and functioned through a system of meaningful
correspondences entrenched itself deep in the collective psyche of human
beings and has never quite relinquished its hold.
Hence,
it would not be erroneous to suggest that the religious function of the
human psyche first found voice in archaic astrology, a philosophy which
assumes that the systematic, recurring but sometimes volatile
behaviours of the celestial inhabitants mediate over all corporeal
phenomena and their relationship to human life. Of course the mere fact
that exact situations involving the celestial bodies in the heavens are
recapitulated periodically and can be calculated with mathematical
precision can only mean that the qualities, influences and relevant
conditions that these events are inexplicably connected with are
predictable. If, then, the path of the human condition is foreseeable
through this sidereal divination then the oikoumene must, in
fact, have been hewn by a conscious and creative mind that transcribed
general details relating the fate of all its divine, semi-divine and
mortal inhabitants, as well as its own into the plastic and intangible
“ether” somewhere. Here we get a taste of the spiritual and holistic
origins of archaic astrology, which, when broken down anatomically,
consisted of three primary aims: to descry one’s future for a chance at
changing the trajectory of fate (astrology); for meteorological purposes
that included the prediction of weather (meteorology); and the
transcription of stellar cycles and arrangements whose movements would
have been tracked to determine an appropriate time for the inception of
agricultural endeavours (astronomy).
The
Chaldeans or Assyrians introduced tangible markers for the qualitative
and quantitative assessment of the heavens in the second millennium bce.
The star-gods, genies or divinities governed a pre-established and
insurmountable destiny that vacillated between auspicious and
inauspicious conditions brought on by specific stellar arrangements, and
all of life on earth basically swayed or reacted to the configuration
of these heavenly waters. Each was ascribed rulership over a specific
day or month, forcing a dissection of time. The Chaldeans proceeded to
define the band of sidereal space that encompasses the wheel of heaven
and interacts with the ecliptic orbit; the equinoctial markers, embraced
by the zodiacal signs of Aries and Libra, could be found at the
intersection of equator and ecliptic whilst their polar opposites, the
tropical or solstitial markers, were to be found in in Capricorn and
Cancer. The just mentioned zodiacal signs, twelve in all, were
represented zoomorphically, anthropomorphically or as composite
creatures using motifs derived from Babylonian mythology, and contained
an exact conformation of stars known as a constellation. With respect to
each individual “sign”, the stars contained in one constellation
pervaded the sidereal space taken up by the imagined zodiacal image in
the night skies.
Proceeding
along an analogous line of reasoning, the ancient Egyptians developed a
calendrical system by observing the heliacal rising and setting of
individual stars. In this arrangement the year was divided into
thirty-six ten-day periods known as decans, each heralded by the
heliacal rising of a particular star. The star Sothis or Sirius, a
celestial embodiment of the Egyptian goddess Hathor-Isis, stood sentry
over the thirty-six divisions as the inaugurator of the entire year. In
the third century bce,
when knowledge of oriental astrology and its esoteric philosophy of
astral determinism reached Egypt through a Hellenistic dispensation
enabled by Alexander the Great (356-323 bce),
the zodiacal and decanal systems merged and three decans were
incorporated into each zodiacal sign. A few acclaimed esotericists like René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz
(1887 – 1961) have argued against a Chaldean importation of astral
determinism into Egypt, claiming that the Egyptians were holistic
thinkers and believed that each part of the human body was under the
mediation of a different star-god or genie that could be invoked to heal
illnesses pertaining to its respective part. Despite its innovative
potential and viability, the theory is disparately related to the
current discussion and will not concern us for the time being.
A
little before Alexander’s conquest the holistic tradition of esoteric
astrology began to differentiate into subcategories. Meteorology became a
distinct branch but it wasn’t until the time of Johannes Kepler
(1571-1630) that the mechanistic natural protoscience known as astronomy
and the animistic qualitative cosmogony of astrology parted company.
The latter matured fully during the second century ce, a period when Claudius Ptolemy (90-168 ce) penned an astrological treatise entitled the Four Books, or Tetrabiblos
in Greek. It was a comprehensive volume of horoscopic astrology, a
subcategory of the divinatory art that seeks to comprehend meaning and
answer questions using a celestial chart or horoscope which captures an
exact moment in time. The work transcribed the qualities of the
astrological signs, the twelve zodiacal constellations on the wheel of
heaven that subsisted through the ages and remain both meaningful and
functional to this very day.
In
entertaining an esoteric interpretation on the zodiac one sees that the
universe is united as One but at the same time coloured by archetypal
forces or elemental blueprints that originate from a mother membrane and
act upon the existing spectrum of variegated consciousness. Of vital
importance is the acknowledgement of the twelve established signs as
functioning symbols; while our ancestors almost certainly imagined
shapes and signs in cupola of the star-studded night, their choice of
animals and figures , real or imagined, are not as random as some might
believe. As unlikely as it seems, the ascribed zoomorphic,
anthropomorphic or composite creatures exhibit qualities that correspond
dynamically to the inherent nature of the group of stars in their
respective corner of the heavens. To give an example the stars of Cancer
are symbolically depicted by the crab; the latter habitual tendency to
seek and never veer far from the comfort of its home, a trait almost
universal amongst all modes of being born under its section of the sky.
While individual stars may belong to a collective archetype in the
manner that a group of human cells belong to one organ and work in
conjunction with one another to achieve a common aim, their unique
positions, magnetism and gravitational force within the astral
configuration permits a degree of freedom from collective law. This is
why the zodiacal band of sidereal space was sometimes depicted in an
active state of unfurling like a parchment of Nile papyrus.
The name given to this precession of imagined figures that comprise real cosmic phenomenon–zoe-diac,
or circle of life–is wholly appropriate given that the general
archetypal patterns or transpersonal influences of being that exist
manifest through all complex life irrespective of time and space and are
deemed to repeat for all eternity like a broken record. The fiery,
restless, urgent and explosive Martian formative force that wishes to
subjugate, to divide and dissect, to compartmentalize, to create, to
own, to dominate and to ascend the evolutionary ladder, for instance, is
indigenous to the fixed stars of Aries. This energy seeps down into
consciousness, sometimes in copious amounts and sometimes in minute
quantities, depending on the trajectory of the sun’s annual circuit and
its conjunction with the stars of the respective constellation. In fact
the nature of the latter’s influence is determined by the conjunction of
the sun with the stars of the head, of the horns, of the hindquarters,
of the forepaws, and so forth. The bold head of the ram is aggression;
the horns raw abundance and virility; his hindquarters signpost stamina
but sometimes a gross overestimation of strength; his forepaws
vulnerability and restlessness. Notwithstanding its waxing and waning
powers, the Arian sign is ubiquitous and indestructible, an inhabitant
of the timeless zone that subjects and bends everything to its will.
This indissoluble will is why all animation is fated to endure an
endless cycle of everlasting repetition…
In
retrospect, the clusters of stars that represent the twelve zodiacal
signs of the macrocosm are like organs of the digestive, circulatory,
respiratory, reproductive, endocrine, and nervous systems of the human
being, the microcosm. They are all associated with different formative,
vital and archetypal energies, just like the various operative and
anatomical systems of the human body are all responsible for the
mediation of different tasks. The passage of the solar orb through the
physical space of each zodiacal cluster ensouls the archaeus or
“ethereal tissue” of its corresponding disposition which in turn
vibrates at the frequency of the physical world and energizes all living
and evolving forms of matter. Naturally, the presence of the qualities
characteristic of the vital force in the end product itself is a
vindication of this hidden transmutational process and a teleological
exponent of tidal interactions between the energetic macrocosm and its
constituent, the receptive microcosm.
The
force working through each zodiacal sign is at its apogee during a
2150-year period in which the stars of its constellation occupy the
vernal point of 21-22 March, a time when the formative forces of Mother
Nature have regenerated enough to infuse life back into our hallowed
planet. This is made possible through slight changes that occur in our
planet’s rotational axis known as axial precession, or precession of the equinoxes.
Those untutored to astronomy would be unfamiliar with this phenomenon,
and so it is quite necessary to engage brief explanation here. Most
people know that the axis of our earth is not vertical but tilted on an
angular radius of 23 degrees 27 arcminutes, an obliquity which generates
seasonal rotation as the solar orb seemingly ascends and descends 23.5
degrees from the equator over the course of the year. During this time
it will cross over the equator twice; these occurrences are called
equinoxes. As the sun rises on the day of an equinox it sluices through
an intersection formed by the celestial equator and the ecliptic. This
is otherwise called the vernal point, which is not fixed but shifts by
about a degree every seventy-two years due to rotational wobble of the
earth’s axis. It takes a period of about 26,000 years (the Platonic
Year) for the axial pole to trace out an imaginary circle around the
ecliptic pole on a radius equivalent to the axis and return to the same
spot. The direction is retrograde to the earth’s daily rotation. Save
for changing the coordinates of stars and constellations which would
otherwise seem fixed into the heavens from the perspective of an
observer, the volatile movement allows the vernal point to inhabit a
zodiacal constellation for a period of about 2160 years before moving
onto another. Hence if the vernal point were in Cancer it would
subsequently moves in an opposite direction to the sun through Gemini,
Taurus, Aries, Pisces, Aquarius, and so forth.
What this phenomenon of axial precession
tells us is that our concept of time is eternal but measurable and
divisible as well. The primary measurers of this human construct are the
twelve constellations, star clusters associated with archetypal
energies that possesses, overwhelm and empower the sentient earth and
all consciousness. From a metaphysical standpoint, the transpersonal
force whose configuration of stars inhabit the vernal equinox achieves
full expression and activation, and will dominate the filtration of
vibrations leaking into the physical zone until the said annual
coordinate passes into another zodiacal sign. Each transpersonal power,
then, rules the vibratory composition of the physical plane for 2160
years, forfeits the position to the adjacent neighbor behind it, and
recaptures this privileged and glorious cosmic position after 26,000
years. Evidence for the validity of what might be described as an
astro-metaphysical phenomenon can be sought in the history of human
consciousness itself.
Taurus, for instance, a sign ruled by Venus and exalted by the moon, inhabited the vernal point between 4380 and 2220 bce.
The aforementioned planetary spheres embody formative forces whose
spirits are wholly feminine, and looking at the state of consciousness
prevenient on our planet at the time automatically vindicates the
paraphysical-physical connection. Anthropological studies reveal a
matriarchal situation in which human consciousness was fundamental
tribal in nature, driven by collective concerns; the individual “souls”
comprising the tribes themselves were imbued by receptivity and
intuition; their minds, on the other hand, were impressionable,
free-thinking, and all-embracing. Their sense of knowing was guided by
raw instinct rather than sense-based rationality and deductive
reasoning. This more tranquil mode of being facilitated an understanding
of the cosmos that has long been under rug swept and forgotten; as the
cause and origin of all life, Nature is the Great Mother Goddess whose
variegated, diverse forms are first-hand evidence of teleology and
meaning, the latter imminent when the relationship of all created forms
to one another is finally contemplated. An earth-based spirituality
works with created Nature, celebrating it through the medium of
unconditional engagement, artistic expression, reenactment, ritual,
transcendence, dance, and anything that might facilitate the impetus of
creation. There can be no greater advocate of this holistic, lunar or
right-brain consciousness than Minoan Crete, a Bronze-Age culture whose
unprecedented artistic and engineering feats were motivated by
everything feminine under the watchful gaze of the omniscient Taurian
eye.
Sadly
the situation was to change rather prominently with Aries, a zodiacal
sign that ruled the heavens and the earth between 2220 and 60bce.
Aries is ruled by Mars and exalted by the Sun, two planetary bodies
which channel a fiery, seedy, and visionary masculine energy of becoming
and differentiation. The energy effected a fundamental change to human
consciousness, now driven by a fully-developed ego that perceives itself
in relation to the Goddess-Self, or God-Self I should say. While in
feminine lunar consciousness the unconscious will was driven by
collective interest, ego-based consciousness shifted the soul’s axis of
rotation to a much more selfish gradient now addressing individual
desires, its self-serving needs and wants. This, in turn, forced a
catastrophic shift in perception of what encompasses the divine, now
understood as the subjugation, ensnarement and destruction of Mother
Nature and its conscious extensions. The impulsive and violent acts
themselves were made possible by the forgery of the Martian metal, iron,
which branded new weaponry including spears, swords, and war chariots,
revolutionized combat, and contributed greatly to the industrialization
of the entire planet. Gone was the earth-base spirituality of respecting
and venerating the bonds of life; the new, scarlet-colored ego of
humanity erroneously sought transcendence through materialistic values
of domination not conducive to the preservation of life. Changes to the
anatomy of the human psyche spurred by the rise of Martian-solar
consciousness generated a worldly domain of dissociated and disparate
empires ruled by sun-worshipping priestcraft and plagued by continual
warfare. In many ways the milieu of the Arian Age resembled a scene from
Dante’s Purgatory: the ancient Egyptians confronted the war-loving
Hittites for territorial expansion into the Near East; the Mycenaeans
burned and looted Cnossos and the Minoan temple-palaces; Homer’s
mythical era unfolded as a nine-year battle between the fated Trojans
and the rage-driven Greek heroes; the Assyrians fought the Babylonians
with their dreaded horse-driven chariots of war; the ancient world fell into the ambitious arms of Alexander the Great, the single greatest warrior in history and
the Romans warred against the barbaric Illyrian-Italic tribes to expand
their empire. These historic events unraveled beneath an omniscient
horde of blood-thirsty sun gods like Apollo, Helios, Mithras, and
Amun-Re.
In
juxtaposing the two zodiacal Ages, the metaphysical reality behind the
mechanistic veil of celestial appearances becomes much more tangible.
The same analysis can be exacted for the Christ consciousness of the
Piscean Age and the forthcoming Aquarian Age. Looking at the cosmos from
this esoteric trajectory goes far in spiritualizing the automaton of
contemporary science, surrendering to the sentient soul of Mother Nature
the dignified worship to which she is wholly entitled, and transforming
the ancient concept of individual and communal fate into a prospective
and endearing philosophy. Perhaps everything is predetermined to a
degree, encrypted in the twinkling hieroglyphs of the fated skies…
I made this for my study group and also huge thanks to @lunaesteria I got a lot of the info from their post.
Graphic design wise I know this is messy as hell but I put glyphs and symbols everywhere to get some baby witches used to all of them since some might be unfamiliar with aspects and planetary symbols
Also over here the week starts with Monday so sorry if that comes off as confusing for some people lol.
A Guide to Different Planetary Geometric Arrangements
Pretty much everyone in magic is familiar with the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, the ritual used by the Golden Dawn as a standard banishing ritual, which involves drawing the pentagrams in the air on the four corners and so on. As each point of the pentagram is connected to an element, a different but similar ritual, the Greater Ritual of the Pentagram, may be used to tune your ritual space for elemental invocation. The same may be done for planetary forces, but in GD logic the pentagram is a sign of the microcosm (elements), while for macrocosmic forces (planets) the hexagram is used instead, which is the figure 1 in the image above.
In the Greater Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram, thus, you draw the hexagrams in the air according to the planet assigned to each corner, clockwise (anti-clockwise banishes). This neatly arranges them in a way that mimics the distribution of planetary correspondences in the Hermetic-Qabbalistic Tree of Life system used by the GD (in which Binah = Saturn, Chesed = Jupiter etc).
You’ll notice though that only the sun has no corner because it’s treated as the sum (no pun intended) of all planets, so a GIRH for the sun involves drawing ALL 6 other hexagrams. This literally hurts.
There are other systems, though, which, in a more practical fashion use a heptagram (7 corners, 7 planets). Figure number 2 is the one used in Sorita D’Este and David Rankine’s version of the planetary ritual explained in their book Practical Planetary Magick (Sorita also explains how it works on her blog). It features the chubbier variation of the heptagram (called a 7/2 heptagram) and the planets are arranged in a week-day cycle order. Number 3 is the skinnier heptagram (7/3) used by the Aurum Solis order (source: Melita Dennings and Philip Osbourne’s Planetary Magick: The Heart of Western Magick). Starting from Saturn at the top, as you follow the line you’ll get the same order as from the GD hexagram (Saturn-Jupiter-Mars-(Sun)-Venus-Mercury-Moon), also mimicking the descent from the 3rd sephirah, Binah, all the way down to Yesod.
The bottom three figures are purely theoretical and, as far as I know, are yet to be actually used in ritual, though they might be useful for me as I’m searching for a more Babylonian-centric system. Numbers 4 and 5 are derived from an academic paper by Peter James and Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs called “Ziggurats, Colors, and Planets: Rawlinson Revisited”, which aims at understanding what planetary order ancient Babylonians used, as well as their color correspondences, based on archeological evidence. Thrillingly for the occultist, they arrive at a pentagram and heptagram distribution: “As it happens, the Ecbatana ziggurat order can be correlated with the standard Neo-Babylonian sequence by means of a pentagram, by plotting either on the corners and reading along the diagonal lines. Such a result is not a mere curiosity. It is well known that, in imperial Roman times, the sequence of the weekdays (by their tutelary deities) was derived from the quasi-heliocentric (“Chaldaean”) planet order then in vogue (Cassius Dio 37.18–19; Boll 1911: 372–75; Neugebauer 1957: 169; 1975: 691) by taking leaps of two.” The pentagram layout excludes the two luminaries, however, though I suppose the Sun could be conflated with Saturn and the Moon with Jupiter due to some weird Babylonian logic that would take too long to explain here (see Ulla Koch-Westenholz’s Mesopotamian Astrology for more info). Their heptagram layout, though, is shockingly similar to Sorita and Rankine’s version, as it also follows the week-day order cycle, though with a different starting point (its top corner is the moon, for Monday, while Sorita and Rankine’s starts with Saturn).
The final figure, number 6, is another scholarly supposition, drawn by Sara de Rose in a paper called “Is CBS 1766 a Tone-Circle?” which attempts to interpret a 7/3 hexagram drawing on a clay tablet as a musical pattern. Its corner attribution also follows the week-day order cycle. I can’t comment on it further, however, due to my lack of musical knowledge.
I have decided to put all of these figures together for my own studies, but I share them here with whomever might be reading this because I think it might be interesting to other magicians who work with planetary magick.
The 13 Moon, 28-day calendar is a new standard of time for all people
everywhere who desire a genuinely new world. If the calendar and time
we follow is irregular, artificial and mechanized, so becomes our mind.
As is our mind, so our world becomes, as is our world today: Irregular,
artificial and mechanized. But if the calendar we follow is harmonic and
in tune with natural cycles, so also will our mind become, and so we
may return to a way of life more spiritual and in harmony with nature.
The 13 Moon calendar synchronizes solar and galactic cycles on July 26
correlating with the star Sirius. Each of the 13 moons has a power,
action, and quality which define an annual program to synchronize our
consciousness with the galactic cycles.
As a perfect measure of cosmic time, this calendar is actually a synchronometer,
an instrument for measuring synchronicity. Followed daily, it gives us a
new lens in which to perceive events. In the New Time, synchronicity is
the norm.
The 13 Moon 28-day synchronometer is a harmonic timespace
matrix. It takes the moon 28 days to orbit the Earth; it makes this
orbit 13 times each year. The standard of measure is the 28-day cycle,
called a moon, because it is the median between the 29.5-day synodic
cycle of the moon (new moon to new moon) and the 27.1-day sidereal cycle
of the moon. Hence, it is a measure of Earth’s solar orbit using the
28-day lunar standard. This creates a perfect orbital measure of 13
moons of 28 days, totaling 364 days, or 52 perfect weeks of 7 days each.
Because the 365th day is no day of the moon or week at all, it is known as the “day out of time” – a day to celebrate peace through culture and time is art!
“The Thirteen Moon calendar is an evolutionary tool to assist
humanity in the unprecedented act of uniting itself on one issue
central to its complete well-being: time. The harmonic convergence of
humanity on this one issue, combined with the inescapable order,
perfection and simplicity of following the 13 Moon calendar will lift
the species as a simultaneous whole into the galactic timing frequency
of 13:20.”
José Argüelles/Valum Votan, The Call of Pacal Votan
The coming new era on our planet has everything to do with a change
of timing frequency. The 13 Moon-28-day calendar is a simple tool that
helps us to raise our frequency and gives us a new lens to view both our
day-to-day and planetary events.
Because both the Gregorian and 13 Moon calendars operate with 52
seven-day weeks annually (364 days), the 13 Moon calendar provides a
perfect daily transition tool for hooking back up with the
higher-dimensional order! It is simple to follow day-to-day as it is
marked with the dates of the Gregorian calendar.
The 13 Moon calendar is comprised of elegantly simple cycles.
Namely: The 7-day week and 28-day moon. Unlike the Gregorian calendar,
the days of the moon (month) and the days of the week line up perfectly,
week-to-week and moon-to-moon. This makes the 13 Moon/28-day calendar a
perpetual calendar.
According to Weill-Parot, the concept of having astrological images on sigils is exclusive to the Christian Latin West. Albertus Magnus proposed the creation of a type of talisman whose power rested completely in natural causes, excluding illicit forms of necromantic magic. This ‘natural magic’ included the use of sigils with astrological images that would contain the astral power of the planets.
Principles of sympathy and antipathy governed the preparation of astrological sigils made of metal. The Sun was astrologically and alchemically associated with gold, so a gold sigil would be struck with a picture of the Sun (usually when it was at its strongest influence, during the vernal equinox) or an astrological sign ruled by the Sun, such as Leo, so the wearer was protected from the malignant influence of the heavens.
Several of Reichelt’s sigils were designed to work by sympathetic principles. Sigils 1–4 and 6–8 were sigils of the Sun in astrological house of Leo. The obverse of sigils 2, 4 and 6 also displays the sign of the ‘heart of the lion’ cor leonis, which is Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo, as well one of the brightest stars in the night sky. The cabalistic symbol for Regulus is engraved on the obverse of sigils 1, 2 and 7.
The sigils’ astral power could be further enhanced by incorporating scriptural quotations and the names of Biblical prophets. Inscribed on sigils 1, 2, 4 and 6 is the common apotropaic formula “Vincit Leo de tribu Iuda, radix David” from Revelation 5: 5, a reference to the biblical David and to astrological Leo. Similarly, some of Reichert’s sigils were inscribed with words from the Gospel of John: “Verbum caro factum est”, causing demons to flee before the power of ‘the Word made Flesh’.
Inscribing the names of angels on sigils was also thought to be efficacious, a tradition begun in the thirteenth century by the increasing influence of Jewish cabalistic texts such as the Sefer Yezirah and the Sefer Razi’el. The texts claimed that the ‘secret names of the God and the angels provided the means by which the powers were called down into the sublunar levels of the cosmos’, and hence used an intricate and often bewildering angelology in ritualistic magic. In sigils 1 and 7, ‘Verchiel’ is inscribed. Verchiel was invoked as the angel of the month of July, ruler of the sign of Leo. Verchiel (here called Zerachiel) is also governor of the Sun and grants powers of the intellect, language, learning and mathematics.
Several of Reichelt’s sigils also bear geometrical characters of triangles, circles and lines, which he realized represented the ‘intelligences and demons’ of the planets based on numerical associations made with the heavenly bodies derived from the rules of cabala. There is also a magic square or grid of numbers engraved on sigil 10, devoted to the planet Mercury. For early modern philosophers, mathematics and magic were intimately connected. From his doctrine that the elements of the body were mingled in geometrical proportions, and that the soul’s elements combined numerically, Agrippa determined that the derived geometrical and numerical figures had peculiar corporeal and spiritual powers.
Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on advanced algebra at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics and a respected astronomer, as well as a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England‘s voyages of discovery.
Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology, and Hermetic philosophy. He devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination. Instead he considered all of his activities to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world, which Dee called “pure verities”.
Occult Aspects 